Training After Racing Season Has Come To A Close
PC: Anna/Adobe Stock
The Fall season is pivotal for a large majority of recreational and semi-competitive runners. Months of training are in the bank, the colors of the changing season begin to bloom, and temperatures begin to decline from their summertime highs. The result: a lot of athletes are tuned to run the fastest that they will all year.
While Fall PRs are thrilling, what’s just as important is the question that follows: 'What do I do next?'"
Many of us will follow Fall time races with a much-needed "off-season." And contrary to what some might believe, what we do during this period could make or break our goals for the coming year.
Common Errors in the Off-Season
First, a clarification: the term "off-season" has taken on more than a single definition. Some see it as the one to four weeks of freeform activity they take at the end of each season before building back into a training focus. Others use the term to refer to months spent in a training twilight zone-- not yet training for next year but all done training for this year. While the first use of the term "off-season" is more accurate, what we're concerned with here is the latter.
If you're an athlete that is wrapping up your year of races or other events, and you haven't thought about what comes next yet, that's okay. But, it doesn't mean you should let go of your training routine entirely-- not yet, at least.
The truth is there are a lot of ways to do the off-season right, but the following are a few ways to do it wrong.
1) Stop running entirely
It's a common mistake, whether made by choice or just a bad habit we've accidentally slid into. By completely breaking from a running schedule in the off-season, we set ourselves back by large degrees. Enough time off, and we may find ourselves spending the four to six months just trying to get back to where we were the year before, much less start progressing towards a larger goal.
We don't need to run daily, but we should aim for a weekly baseline of two to easy three runs.
2) Keep training the way you were
The pitfall of many athletes is to keep up a training schedule after their big events that is almost identical to the training schedule they held before that big event-- especially if they had great results.
"While Fall PRs are thrilling, what’s just as important is the question that follows: 'What do I do next?'"
The problem is that what works for awhile usually won't work forever. Something will break down, whether that be elements of fitness that've been neglected for too long, or a bit of burnout for the mind after so many months of doing the same things.
The off-season is a time to change things up, and to change them significantly. Explore new training types and training focuses to keep both mind and body fresh.
3) Train in ways you strongly dislike because you believe it is what your fitness requires
The third big risk of the off-season for athletes is to force themselves into training routines that they aren't truly enjoying. They'll argue to themselves that, as much as they may dislike it, the training they're doing is what's required in order to move their fitness along. A common example is the runner logging endless hours on a treadmill during the cold winter months when they find treadmill running miserable.
If we don't like what we're doing on a daily basis, we're burning through our mental matches. Eventually, that motivation will decline. The off-season is a time when we should be developing a growing enthusiasm for training, as well as the prospects of the coming event season! Find a way to make the change to your schedule an enjoyable change.
Developing The Ideal Off-Season
The off-season is a time to rest your brain more than your body. Engage in different training activities than you're used to, but that sound fun and exciting. Take up cycling, swimming, cross country skiing or even skimo. There's increasing popularity amongst mountain athletes to make an entire switch of primary sport from summer running to winter skimo or cross country skiing. The benefits, both mental and physical, can be tremendous.
Still, running remains important during the off-season. A routine is critical to maintaining key adaptations to ground-impact that are unique to running. Even with lots of cross-training in the schedule, two or three short runs per week is generally a good choice.
Identifying and Addressing Weaknesses
The most important element of a successful next-season is a successful off-season. While the guidelines in the last section offer enough to set us up for a successful next-season, using the strategy below can set us up for more significant progress in the next event season.
Consider the elements of balanced running fitness:
Aerobic base volume (Zone 2, Marathon race effort and longer),
Tempo effort (Zone 3, Half marathon to Marathon race effort),
Lactate Threshold/VO2 Max (Zone 4, Mile to 10K race effort),
Anaerobic Capacity/ Sprinting (Zone 5, 50 meters to Mile race effort),
Strength/Power (move heavy objects)
With that list of options in mind, what are you primed to do really well? Usually the answer will be determined by the last event of our season. If we just finished training for and racing a 10K, we can feel pretty confident that we're prepared to crush Lactate Threshold and VO2 Max workouts right now.
Next, what other kinds of training in the list did you do semi-regularly? Name two. The types of training we've had moderate practice with over the past three to four months are typically adjacent to our event intensity, meaning just above or below it. In the case of our 10K training, we're probably moderately practiced in Tempo and Anaerobic Capacity sessions as well.
The remaining elements from the list represent our deficits going into the off-season. They are parts of our fitness that are important not just for performance as an athlete, but for general wellness. And, they will typically make excellent training focuses during the off-season.
The final consideration, if we have it, is what events we're targeting in the next competition season. Not all of us may know what we're going to aim for in the next competition season yet, and that's okay. We've already clearly articulated our weaknesses, and those remain great focuses for the off-season if we don't know what's in store for next season. But if we do know, then we can determine what the three to five months of training leading into those events will probably emphasize, and we can backtrack to our off-season from there. As an example: if we aspire to run a mountainous 100 mile race next Fall, the months of the late spring and summer will likely be filled long and relatively slow runs in the mountains. But well-rounded fitness is important to our continued health and progression as athletes, so we better aim to develop speed and power in the legs before spring arrives.
There's a common phrase in popular ball sports: the best defense is a good offense. In our case, I'd suggest a small revision: the best next-season starts with a good off-season.
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